


discordance and symmetry

by AikoIsari



Series: Digimon No Verse [34]
Category: Digimon - All Media Types, Digimon Story Series | Digimon World Series, Digimon World Series
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, Fairy Tale Retellings, Family, Friendship, M/M, Magical Realism, Non-Sexual Slavery, Slavery, Terminal Illnesses
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-16
Updated: 2017-10-16
Packaged: 2019-01-18 07:33:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12383721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AikoIsari/pseuds/AikoIsari
Summary: (World 2/Cyber Sleuth) There is a rumor on the air, that of a bird with magic in their bones, one that can heal any wound. Akira believes none of it, of course. But when his father's wounds fester and pus, the young prince journeys to find it, and he finds none of what he expected at all.





	discordance and symmetry

**Author's Note:**

> Warning for illness, past slavery and evidence of slavery, magic.

There was no doubt in young Akira's mind that his father had once kept slaves.

It was not enough to say: well, he doesn't do it anymore, he pays them now, because it was all in the walls, in the sometimes stony silence between his mother and father. It was in the way eyes flicker downward every day at the sight of him. It's in the way everyone wears too nice of clothes.

Still, Akira didn't think on it too much. Because it really has nothing to do with him these days. He's an ordinary soldier in training, and all the servants are paid. It should be long over.

And yet his father had fallen ill once again, as he had when he had kept slaves.

He heard the coughs in the nightly silence of the palace.

Like now.

Great, awful hacking sounds reached through his shut window. Akira threw one of many pillows over his head but all the silence did was make his palms sweat and him scrunch his eyes up in dismay.

As prince, if he wanted, he could go and demand entry in the room, demand something to stifle the sound. Others had whispered that he should. However, he could not. He could not see the sagging skin and sunken eyes on paper again. The last time had made him throw up in the hallway, shameful as it was.

Eventually, the coughing will die down, he knows. It always does. For a few hours, days, maybe a week, his father will seem better than this. His father will command again. And then he'll fall il and the cycle will continue until his father simply just… can't. And then he'll be king.

The very thought chills his blood.

Eventually, Akira made himself sleep. The fairy tales sitting at his bedside table are no help tonight, it seems.

* * *

His father had kept slaves, both human and inhuman. He'd never met the inhuman ones as a child, but the human ones still had marks on their wrists. He had once tried to bandage one apparently. He remembered none of this.

Even his weapons master, even the trainer of Knights was a former slave.

Akira lowered his blade, watching the man's broad chest heave air. He changed the angle, preparing to step forward. Then, with another pause, he did so, lifting the weapon as it clanged with the raised sword. It caught in the hilt and Akira grit his teeth, making to push it back up. However, the simple parry unseated his footing, making him stumble until the heavy hilt his him square in the gut.

Akira groaned at the pain to his bottom and legs. "Dead, I know," he managed to wheeze. "Couldn't tell by my stomach."

"You'd be feeling much less if I had stabbed you, boy." The elder settled in his stance once more. "You're lucky we're at peace, thanks go to your father."

_Thanks go to the cursed and dying._

"Do you thank him because you're paid to?" Akira blurted out before he could stop himself, tugging at his red hair for lack of anywhere to apply himself.

The man paused, looking at him like he wasn't the crown prince of Directory. Needless to say, like he did his own son. Then Zudokorn sighed low into his beard. "Vandar is given thanks for his actions of the present and curses from the past, even from you."

_As you being here is an action._

Akira shook his head. "Right." He didn't want to think about that, especially now at the renewed coughing sound filtering through the windows left open for ventilation.

"Can we continue?" he decided to ask, because that train of thought was not somewhere he needed to go or wanted to be near.

* * *

"You ever hear the song of the nightingale?"

Akira fed his patamon and listened to Joy-Joy, required to be friends with him and friends with him anyway.

"The what?"

The girl laughed, laughed like bells and wore the name that suited her. "I forgot, you're so young. There once was a bird trapped in a cage, with such magic and wonder in its voice it was said to grant wishes." Her hair buns bounced as she spun upon the edge of the pond. "Your father was such a conqueror at the time, and he decided then, like all things, he had to have it. So he hunted and hunted and caged the tiny creature, the stories say, and made it sing. It sang on until it grew weak with loneliness and with no wind in its heart."

She looked at him, brown eyes sparkling like they were the only crystal in a puddle of mud. "They say the wilting bird broke his heart and he set him free. The song of the nightingale set us all free. And it took wing and never returned."

Joy-Joy took this moment to bounce upon the top of the water, a talent only she had that, as a Selkie's child, neither he nor Bertran could imitate. "But your father treasured the song, and so he made a music box to play it for him." She frowned now, looking towards the roof of the only second story building in the complex. "And perhaps it's supposed to save him."

"Magic doesn't save anyone." Akira threw a rock that dodged Joy-Joy's nimble legs. "Just gets them into trouble." Even now, they ran past the two children with spellbooks in hand, not even hiding that they were going to fail.

"Mayhap." Joy-Joy agreed, silver chains clanking over her bracelets. Deramon squawks at her in annoyance. "But it exists and we live with it."

Akira scowled. That was true. "Why didn't the nightingale come back?"

Joy-Joy shrugged. "Because he was a bird who needed to go back to his nest. That's my guess, anyway. Maybe there were other nightingales who needed him. They live so far away now, so far from the precious king. Why?"

"Because everyone returned but them." Even her, whose people descended from the legendary warriors who had rebelled against heaven. They had been ruined by his father, everyone was saying now. "I… I don't think my dad deserves this. If there's some way to fix it-" If there's some way to leave "Then surely I can go look right?"

Joy-Joy looked at him sadly, then fondly. "Then we'll go with you, of course. Or I will. Bertran will try to stop you, but who needs him?"

"You'll get in trouble." He swallowed his guilt because he had known the second he had said something she would go with him because they were friends. Or because she was his to look after. Or something else. There was a reason he didn't want to think about it.

"I know where the lost ones go." Joy Joy leaped from the top of the water into an elegant curtsy. "Besides, where else would I go? You and I are tied as only we can be!"

Akira nodded through the lump in his throat. "Right. Thanks."

Joy-Joy laughed at him and Akira let her because it was something. Better than something.

**Author's Note:**

> Here I come inventing pairings no one's heard of again~! Enjoy!
> 
> Challenges: digiotpweek day 3, Novella Masterclass story/world 7 (fairytale retelling), three-sided box challenge, interseason boot camp - calendar, gameverse boot camp prompt - travel, diversity writing GG J32, easter egg advent day 25 (fairy tale retelling)


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